This was the second pedal I ever bought around 10 years ago but I haven't used it a lot in the last few years because I think it sounds a little weak and fizzy. I had heard about Russian Greens and I tried a friend's Fredric Effects Russian Green and really liked the way it sounded, so I set about modding my existing pedal to sound like it.

The Kitrae website suggests that although a lot of component values are different between versions, there are a select few that make the majority of difference in sound. I opted just to switch these out, you can see the components I switched here (couldn't find a 0.039uf cap so I used 0.033uf):

Not sure how the sound holds up against a vintage unit, a boutique clone or the reissue, but to my ears it sounds really good. Close enough for me anyway! A lot darker and bassier on lower notes but really punchy the higher up you go.

I don't have the equipment to make an accurate recording, but I thought someone out there might find this useful if they want to give their NYC Reissue Big Muff a new lease of life.

Hi there, first and foremost I want to say I'm a hobbyist musician, I like playing in my spare time. I don't make my living from music.

That said, I've recently decided to take the plunge and purchase a Moog synthesizer. I've wanted one forever and finally am able to afford it. I've decided on the Subsequent 37 CV or Subsequent 37. The reason being I can't afford a voyager xl and I wanted something a little more functional than the sub phatty.

Ok so my understanding of cv is limited. The way I understand it is that cv is like midi. MIDI controllers plug into the computer, and then you boot up Reason (the software) and you assign different knobs and keys and buttons to different aspects of the program. For example I might have knob x assigned to the rate of delay on the particular synth I'm running in Reason.

Okay so that's how I understand cv outputs. Correct me if I'm wrong.

If that's the way it works, then the cv outputs on the subsequent 37 cv are meant to function in much the same way as a midi controller, you connect the sub37 to the modular and then suddenly you can control the modular from the sub37. In other words cv is meant solely for control, not actually for blending sounds from the sub37 with the modular, correct?

My big question is this, I'm about to buy my first ever synthesizer. I want to spend a little extra money on something nice so I won't feel like I need to buy something new anytime soon. I don't own any modular gear, but I haven't ruled out potentially investing in some in the future. If I were to buy modular gear I would want a keybed larger than 37 keys. In other words I wouldn't actually use the sub37 I would make sure that if I buy modular I'm also buying a solid keyboard controller that has a nearly full set of keys. All that said is it worth while to buy the sub37 cv version or not? I don't want to buy the non-cv version only to find that I didn't understand cv in the first place and I actually do want the cv. On the same note I don't want to spend $300 for a function that I may never use.

Guess where "Life is a trip ✈" contest brought us this time?
Yes, we are in India, particularly - in Bangalore city. In the hands of the talented brothers from Audio Units
Conquering all realms of music with perfection, Audio Units have time and again struck a chord with those who believe in the sanctity of life and music. A brainchild of Bangalore based brother duo - Ashwin Baburao a.k.a and Ashrith Baburao – the artistes’ eclectic influences led them to collaborate with each other. While Ashwin Baburao created a niche for himself in the DJ circuit since 2000, playing out to the biggest venues & festivals across the country, Ashrith, decided to give himself a different kind of schooling involving utmost geekery with music and computers. Their passion for music and the ability to magically transform any sound to melody has allowed them to explore a broad range of musical styles and even such a oddities as modular synths.

Hi guys as some of you may know I’m totally blind, how easy do you think a tempest would be for totally blind person to you? How menu based is it? How are the menus navigated? Also how sensual are they to the use of the machine? And how many options are there per menu? Your help with these questions would be great thanks very much everyone :-)

I am very limited on space now. Having a baby soon so my would be studio space is getting set up as a nursery. The wife is very accommodating though, So I’m planning to mount the TV at the foot of my bed and and have my keyboard and synths underneath.

I have a korg sv1 on an onstage ks7150 table stand. It’s really sturdy. I’ve been looking at the ksa8000 2nd tier ksa8000

Does anybody have experience with that? I want to try to get both my sub phatty and Karp odyssey on the second tier. Or am I trying to put too much up there? If they both don’t fit I could always probably throw my Maschine pads up there. But I have limited space. Which also means limited room for potential growth if I try to add in another stand or even a poly synth one day.

This thing. It's from an anime. 100% synth and oldschool sampler. Very 80s. I'm thinking about trying to reproduce it, but that depends on determining what synths were used, and whether there are any VST equivalents.

Ampron Aubade is a very rare analog monophonic 3-octave flip-top style synthesizer which remains a mystery to even many collectors in the synth world... It is mentioned briefly in the A to Z guide to synthesizers book by British synth expert Peter Forrest.

The country and company and year of manufacture of origin are unknown, though Forrest links it to the Japanese company Arai/Aria for possible distribution at the time of manufacture which appears to be the early 70s ...

A fifth section has the master volume and a phone output... in the rear is a single mono output line .. On the left side of the keyboard is a weighted slider that controls modulation. The build quality is exceptional .. wood and metal and it weighs a good 25 pounds and the knobs are all solid well placed .. the keyboard and flip top panel has a similar build quality to the classic Moog Model D... the graphics are clean and rather tasteful though the language is odd.... the circuit boards and internal electronics are all sprayed black, which has led a few people to believe it was done to prevent copying or reverse engineering which leads to the prototype scenario...

The build quality, though, is almost too good for a prototype of an unknown synth .. a few were built because there is the one that was in the New England Synthesizer Museum in the 90s and mine which is in excellent condition overall... Forrest in his book states "This seems to have been a standard 37 note monophonic synthesizer in a semi-flight case with a steeply angled control panel, not honestly very full of controls ..24 knobs and a couple of switches dotted around, and a large gap at either end. This wasteful use of metal seems to imply a very small scale manufacturer. From the sound of the name this would appear to be made in a French-speaking country so what Arai / Aria was doing with it is a little mysterious.

Possibly the single most hated Drum Machine/Synthesizer ever produced, the Akai Rhythm Wolf is a fully analog 4 voice drum machine, 1 voice bass synthesizer that polarizes the synth community to this day.

Amidst the euphoria of the "New Analog Revolution" of the 2010's, where analog electronic instruments had not only come screaming back with a vengeance, but they howled at a price anyone could afford, Akai unleashed a product that seemingly hummed the anthem of "instant classic". Its' specs read like something any self-respecting synth-geek should be hiding under the mattress, lest their mother find it.

Full VCO, analog four voice drum machine, with one voice, variable Saw/Square, resonant VCF packing, envelope shaper equipped bass synth. It seemed to be an 808 and 303 all in one box for the lowest price one could be charged and still take it seriously. Was this going to be the "genre creating", "Mojo Box" for the new generation of electronic musicians?

In what ended up being as much a biopsy of "internet culture" as a review of a musical instrument, the question was answered with a resounding "NO!" when a Youtube reviewer's rant went viral. In this video, a disgruntled and disheveled youth spouted venom at Akai's new product as if it had done him some deep personal wrong. It turned out one video wasn't enough, soon part two appeared, providing a seething, bookend to his first damning installment. In the day or two that had passed, his mood hadn't improved.

Unfortunately for Akai, the videos were entertaining to a large segment of the instrument-buying population, and it seemed no one could watch the video without adopting the opinion of the reviewer. The Rhythm Wolf was D.O.A, it's competitive price insured some sales, but these led to copycat videos and before long it was accepted as fact that the Rhythm Wolf was a dud, whether anyone had actually tried it for themselves or not. Did it deserve this bad reputation? Or was it the first electronic musical instrument to fall victim to the "online bullying" phenomenon?

First, let's examine the specs and what is universally agreed upon concerning the Rhythm Wolf, be it good or ill.

As advertised, it is a four-drum voice, one synth voice, VCO analog, electronic groovebox/sequencer. Examining it straight out of the box, its superior build quality is unquestioned, even by its critics. It is a solid and weighty unit that has certainly been built to last, and though close examination reveals "fake" real-wood-sides (plastic made to look like wood) the sturdiness of the instrument itself has never been questioned and is a pleasant surprise in this price range.

Moving left to right, each individual voice has a column of four parameter dials that range down to an MPC type velocity sensitive pad assigned to that voice only. It should also be noted that only 3 stages of velocity: Hard, Medium, Soft, are available -- there are no shades of grey in between. So a tap with a "CC" velocity value of 30-90 will all sound soft, 91-110 medium and 111-127 hard. All "CC" values in between the threshold numbers will sound at the same velocity.

Each voice's dials offer parameters unique to that voice. They are as follows:

Kick Drum: Volume, Tune, Attack, Decay,
Snare Drum: Volume, Tune, Noise, Decay
Percussion: Volume, High tune, Noise, Low tune
High Hat (Note that the High Hat is given two pads, one for open one for closed. The only real difference being that the decay is delayed on the "Open hat" pad)
Volume, Tune, Decay
Bass Synthesizer: Volume, Tune, Filter Cut off, Envelope amount, Filter Resonance, Decay. (There is also a switch that allows the user to choose between a Saw and a Square wave)

Finally, at the far right there are two "Global control" knobs:
Volume, Howl (Howl is Akai-speak for Overdrive, turning this knob overdrives the entire unit and effects all voices)

The disappointments begin early as the kick drum is a flaccid and, indeed, a barely audible affair that sends one reaching for the attack knob first thing. The dismal news continues as one realizes that whether it's tune or attack (volume and decay function normally) these parameter knobs barely effect the sound at all, this is a problem found throughout the device, but is felt the hardest here. The kick lacks a snappy transient and there is nothing the user can do about it. New users no doubt, having begun their exploration of the Wolf with visions of analog 808 and 909 kicks in their minds are bitterly disappointed, and justifiably so. It feels that no matter what you do, the kick is never present enough, how Akai let the Wolf out to pasture with such weak toothed kick is beyond comprehension.

Things pick up considerably in the neighboring snare voice. Though the tune knob is barely good for a few semi-tones, the oscillator produces an excellent "Thud" at 200 Hz and the white noise generator produces a piercing but never annoying whiplash of sizzle at both long and short decay levels.

Next is the appealing but odd "Percussion" voice, as it seems to be nothing more than a DIFFERENT approach to snare, the high and low tune knobs dial two separate pitches to the user's desired interval, while the noise and decay knobs provide the same white noise burst and dispersion as the neighbouring snare voice did.

The Hats are a split decision. Once again the tune knob seems only good for a slight shift in tone, the decay comes as advertised. Between the two pads for open and closed respectively, the hats do not disappoint or thrill.

Lastly, we come to the Synth voice and perhaps the most damning piece of evidence against the Rhythm Wolf. The Bass synth's pitch tracking is improperly set, thus the "Hard" sequencer/ Shift function buttons below the pads, which serve triple duty as "piano" keys play their assigned pitches audibly out of tune, rendering the bass synth useless. Another method of playing pitches, namely playing the bass synth's singular pad and twisting the tempo dial for pitch change proves no more effective.

Let it be known, that, within a few months, Akai released a "Tuning App" for the Wolf's synth. It does a passable job and gets the pitch tracking right for a period of time, but it must be run multiple times, and the synth will start to drift back out if it isn't used every 25 minutes or so. Also, with the lightning pace of computer OS changes and Akai's abandoning of this product, a day will come soon when modern computers can no longer run the "Tuning App." When that day comes, either a benevolent programmer will create a third party app for it, or the Wolf's synth voice will be forever useless.

The synth voice itself is pleasingly rich in either Saw or Square form, though, disappointingly, the filter resonance cannot be turned all the way up because the last 20% will dive-bomb the voice's volume out of Audible range. The envelope amount knob is more of an envelope delay control, that adjusts when the envelope's attack occurs, cut-off and decay function as expected.

Moving to the global knobs, one is glad to find volume does as it promises, the Howl (overdrive) knob, however, is a curious affair. Firstly, it is as noisy as the day is long, but it is also only effective for the first 40% after that, no amount of discernible change can be detected.

The sequencer is a simple but well-endowed affair. The drums transmit on MIDI Channel 10, with fixed note numbers, so no changing them to fit in better with other gear. The synth transmits hard on channel 1 and includes a "note-tie" feature, that keeps the envelope open while consecutive notes play.

There are 16 banks with 16 step "A" and "B" Patterns each pattern also includes a "fill" which can be triggered by hand to substitute for the entire pattern, one for each. Thus making each of the 16 banks essentially 64 step-patterns, triplets and variable swing are all available, as are grid resolutions (in either regular notes or triplets) from 1/4 to 1/32. The sequencer is no disappointment.

Finally, there are two outputs. One will carry the entire mix through the overdrive FX unless a 1/4 jack is plugged into the other "Synth out" jack, under these conditions the synth will NOT pass through the overdrive through the drums still will.

In conclusion the Rhythm Wolf has some egregious flaws, but it also has a scruffy charm that some will find irresistible, after playing with one is easy to see the proper comparison would have been a CR78 or other 70's groove box, not an 808 or 909, it is primitive, it is flawed, but it is also a unique and curious piece of gear, something we may not see enough of these days. If you want some dirt old-school analog splat and aren't afraid of the wild tuning irregularities and vanishing kick drum, then perhaps you have what it takes to tame the Akai Rhythm Wolf.

In the last week, I have re-racked my modules 3 times. Any time that a new module is introduced into my delicate little ecosystem, I try to find the best layout to account for things like patch cable flow, knob/button access, and a modicum of order.

I'm in the process of building this set up. i got everything up to the polaris and now I am delving into the sampler/drum parts of this set up. Is there anything that I'm not thinking about and that clearly is a flaw in this system?

The 3HP CZ1 module is a phase distortion oscillator in a 3HP module. It replicates the famous PD waveform and can make resonant sweeps without a filter. Based on the CZ-1 chip (http://www.dspsynth.eu) it features a 1V/Octave pitch input with a 5 octave range and a peak index CV input with a range of 0.2x […]

I don't understand. Why is buffer such unwanted feature in pedals these days? I don't just talk about DIY pedals but about production models also... For example TC electronics. They make complete range of stompbox effects with true bypass. And then they launch dedicated buffer pedal... Wtf? Can someone explain?